


The Breaking Light

by stardropdream



Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Introspection, Long-Distance Relationship, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-31
Updated: 2017-01-31
Packaged: 2018-09-21 05:04:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,632
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9532682
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stardropdream/pseuds/stardropdream
Summary: Longing does not come easily to Bull.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [mellyflori](https://archiveofourown.org/users/mellyflori/gifts).



> a very very very very long overdue birthday fic for Melly! Sorry for such a long delay but... hey... at least I'm writing a pairing I've literally never written before? Yay??? 
> 
> Happy (horrendously belated) birthday, Melly! ♥

Longing does not come easily to Bull. Rather, it is not a concept he is familiar with. He understands the grip of nostalgia, or the gentleness a memory can have after staring back at it across years. It isn’t that Bull has never missed things or people or places. He knows that the Qun will always be a wound that won’t heal – something to pick at, to pluck apart, something to prod until it hurts too much to bare – then let it scab over and repeat. 

He knows this, and he knows that he can’t think of his Tama long without remembering harsher thoughts and memories. He certainly doesn’t remember Seheron fondly, but he remembers people who are no longer there or here – friends and comrades alike. That prickly, painful examination of Tal-Vashoth – the acts he committed for the sake of security, the lingering though that, maybe, they weren’t as mad as they’d seemed—

Regardless, longing does not come naturally to Bull. Longing for Dorian does not come naturally – and indeed neither of them could have expected this would be their future, at all. 

But it is something that weighs in him. That’s what it means to take one’s heart from a chest – to gift it into another’s hands, to declare that another living, breathing, distant thing should be your heart at all. Bull never would have guessed or expected this is where he would be. 

There were countless moments at Skyhold where he knew that Dorian was more than a breath. Distant nights slung into a tent together, before they’d fucked but after they knew they would eventually fuck. Or lazy nights in the Herald’s Rest, laughing at Sera as she rolled around the floorboards and led a loud rendition of song she’d crafted about bees, for copper coin and the thrill of it. Killing things together, drenched in blood – yeah, Bull missed those parts, the way guts would cling to Dorian’s hair and he’d be disgusted but beautiful and frightening. 

It weighs on him, some days. The longing. 

Still, when the crystal around his neck glows, he always picks it up, runs his thumb heavy along the soft pink side of it, cups it in his hand when he says, “Hey, Kadan.” 

Like it is easy – because that, at least, is – to hear Dorian’s voice, to know his voice is warm in response as he speaks with him. As if he is right there beside him and not miles and miles away. 

 

-

 

“If I were a less selfish man,” Dorian says quietly, that kind of quiet honesty he can afford with a sea stretching between them, “I would let you go. It isn’t fair to have you waiting like this.” 

Face to face, Dorian would have been more flippant, dismissive, the true worry disguised with affect – a pretentious pretending, one that they both knew Bull can see through, but insisted all the same. The crystals, for Dorian, demand honesty – Bull knows every hitch, every breath, every little unsaid word between each of Dorian’s words. Bull knows him too well. There is little place to hide, even without observing body language, the looks Dorian casts Bull’s way. He has no image of how Dorian would look speaking towards the crystal – can only imagine it; he has never witnessed Dorian contacting Bull through the crystals, has only ever known Dorian waiting for him in the doorway of their villa, reaching for him. 

There are many things that Bull can say to these words. He knows Dorian is waiting for an answer, can hear it in the silence that emanates from the crystal. 

He could tell him he wouldn’t want that, that he would want to keep him – but want is such a foreign thing to him, even now. He understands it in concept, but understands it less in the context of his own desires, blooming slowly in his chest. 

He could tell Dorian that there would never be anyone else but him. Sex, sure, but love is strangely finite and infinite. It is not a word native to Bull’s language – and even now, he still thinks in Qunlat first, sometimes sloppily thinks of a Common equivalent, and comes up short. Love, for Bull, is a stressful and painful thing. For Bull, things are choices – but loving Dorian was never a choice. To break that down further, to examine it like he would anything else in his life, is too unsettling to examine. He lets it exist as it is, ad accepts that it is so. That, at least, is something he is familiar with – accepting what is, and what shall be. 

There are many things that Bull can say and instead he says only, “Kadan.”

And there is little else he can say – or needs to say. He hears Dorian breathe out. Bull does not _demand_ the answering endearment, but knows it will come, expects it in the way that Dorian’s breath hitches for a moment, a tumble of unsaid words spilling from Dorian’s mouth in that slow silence. 

“Amatus,” Dorian breathes out, and he can hear the tentative little smile that would quirk Dorian’s mustache, lips full and wanting, “As it turns out, though, I am a selfish man.” 

“Yeah,” Bull answers, and he is smiling when he says, “But I like that about you.” 

Selfishness is another thing that Bull is learning – something that Dorian has taught him, in the best of ways. It is still a foreign thing to him, something tentative and uncertain – to want, to need, to demand despite what others might need, despite what might be _best_ , and there is such a freedom in that surety of self. Bull is still learning it, thinks he likely will never fully know it – but can know it through Dorian. 

“Mmm,” Dorian hums, his tone lighter now, a distinct, promising purr curling up the corners of his words, “There are a great many things you like about me.”

It is not a dismissal, the shift in tone and topic – just as Bull can read Dorian across the crystals, Dorian must hear what Bull does not say, the tentative footfalls he is taking to cross an unsteady path he is still learning to navigate. This, at least, is a language they both know and understand and thrive in. 

“Oh yeah,” Bull answers, smiling more now. “Why don’t you tell me about it?” 

 

-

 

He knows that if a day came when Dorian wanted to end it, Bull would let him. It’s a strange thought – but one he’s thought all the same. There have been times away from one another when a barmaid has ducked forward a little too far, enough for him to see down her dress. Knows of times when a man with a soft smile had looked at Dorian for too long – because Dorian would tell him, and Bull would hear the blush in his voice as he discussed so-and-so’s ridiculous advances. And in those moments, there would be temptation, but a muted and distant thing. 

Bull knows that if Dorian told him _katoh_ , that Bull would not protest. 

But he also knows that there would never be another. 

“You’re telling me,” Dorian had said once, brow furrowing, “That _Kadan_ can be for more than one person?” 

Bull had shrugged at the time, explained that the romantic undertones weren’t inherently there – but could be there. But friends and family can be _Kadan._ Many can be _Kadan._

Dorian’s expression had pinched further – although he did not voice the frustration, the slight upheaval such a revelation caused in him. He didn’t need to say it for Bull to know it. 

“But,” Bull had told him, hand heavy on Dorian’s back, sliding down his spine, waiting until he felt Dorian’s shoulders relax, his hand cupped along the shelf of his shoulder blade. “There’s only one _Kadan_ for me.” 

And that much, he knows, is true. _Katoh_ could be an end, but not the end Bull might want. He didn’t know the full weight of giving a heart away – and now it is too late to give it back properly. Dorian might hand it back to him someday, but it would never return to his chest the way it was supposed to. 

In that much, Bull knew he was broken. And knew – understood fully – why the Qun stressed madness so badly; the giving away of your self was surely madness. Selfishness and longing – a heart beating outside of your chest. He was doomed. Even if he weren’t Tal-Vashoth now, even if he could go back – there was nothing left to fix. If he even wanted to be fixed at all. 

 

-

 

He hears Dorian before he sees him, their crystals glowing between them. It’s a rare day that Bull should be the one who reaches the villa first. Dorian has been chatting about something about someone’s cravat or something equally as tedious, more a show of connection between them then any need to convey this information. 

But Bull sees him coming around the bend, leading his horse – and even that far away, Bull sees him pause. Hears the slightest pause in Dorian’s speech before the talk of whoever-who-cares falls away and Dorian is walking faster. 

Bull steps down the path leading towards the villa, goes to meet him, reaches for him – that sort of frenzied need that he can barely contain – and he used to be so much better at hiding his thoughts, but Dorian is so much better at reading him now—

And Dorian cups his cheek, drags him down, kisses him with a quiet, hushed, breathless, reverent _Amatus._

And Bull—

Bull picks him up into his arms, no burden for him to hold, the weight of their distance and time spent apart passing between them, zeroing in on them and them alone.

**Author's Note:**

> I can be found [on my tumblr.](http://stardropdream.tumblr.com/)


End file.
